Personal

For a while I turned up the volume, closed my eyes, and let the music flood my mind. As always, the sound brought with it a stream, a river, a voracious torrent of memories. Memories half-forgotten and vividly remembered, memories of happiness and of pain, memories of love and loss. Memories, rivers of life. Yet rivers never twice entered.

In my personal philosophy, I’m leaning towards determinism: the view that our actions, decisions, and destinies are somehow decided – determined – in advance. However, I am able to differentiate at least between two types of determinism. Both have their issues, both need to be thought through more, and neither of them wins the argument for me. What about you?

Imagine you could pause your current life for a year and travel the world. Imagine quitting your job and interrupting your college studies. Imagine packing three sets of clothes, a camera, a laptop, and a book of philosophy, and leaving for the Near East and Asia. For the ancient temples of Turkey, for the veiled women of Iran, for the mountain ranges of Pakistan, for the heat of India, for the monasteries of Tibet, for the wonders of China. Hitchhiking, riding a bike, taking trains, walking. Living on a few dollars a day, enjoying every day to the full and having no definite plans. Meeting people and immersing in their culture.

A few days ago I returned from a four-day skating tour to the German Flaeming. I have traveled 176 kilometers on eight wheels and listened to hours of
my favorite music: trance (for me, in-line skating and music form an inseparable symbiosis).
Flaeming is paradise on earth for skaters…

A high-school teacher once openly derided a pupil for his English pronunciation. “After four years of high school study, I would expect something more worthy of thy education”, saith the teacher. “Many a word have thou utterly transmogrified by thy unbecoming articulation, and thy discourse was not a little difficult to understand and make sense of.” Not content with abasing the pupil thus, he chided him yet more.

Your trusty headphones serve you the familiar rhythms of Armin van Buuren’s
brilliant trance. The sun is shining like crazy, the wind is buzzing in your ears,
and the eight polyurethane wheels literally sing in contact with the asphalt.
You love in-line skating, and you have been missing it for too long. You speed up; the combined noise of wind and
wheels nearly drowns out the music. The volume clearly needs to be increased. You
do so without slowing down. The outside world is a blur; the houses, the gardens, the
parked cars, the occasional pedestrians taking a stroll. Faster, faster! You’re flying,
spreading wings, stroking the wind…no, you are the wind.
You are Zephyrus.